10 Treurenberg, 1000 Brussels
COLOUR: “the property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way it reflects or emits light.”
MOMENTUM: “the impetus gained by a moving object.”
Though both terms are borrowed from the realm of physics, and seem to stand apart without immediate relation, there is one field where they converge — art.
Colour is born from movement: from the artist’s pulse, the pressure of a hand, the charge that turns motion into image — and from form, meaning unfolds.
Yet something more is required to render all this visible: contrast.
In this exhibition at the Liszt Institute Brussels, five distinguished Hungarian artists from two generations reveal what happens when the deliberate act of placing things side by side is not random, but intentional — when juxtaposition itself becomes a bearer of message. They speak in the language of abstraction, one that resists easy interpretation. These works resist quick understanding. They require time, attention, the viewer’s active gaze — a dialogue between two acts of creation.
The exhibiting artists stand at different points along the arc of artistic life and self-expression. Among them is one who represented Hungary at the 60th Venice Biennale, and another just setting out on his path. One assembles art-historical allusions from Lego bricks; another returns to the ancient craft of glassblowing. One is captivated by the absence of physical objects — by the tension of emptiness — another by the biomorphic unfolding of layers.
In physics, phenomena can be described with precision — almost every process can be marked, measured, or explained. But what this exhibition — and generally good art — reveals has no formula. Here, we must rely solely on the subjectivity of the gaze — on vision itself, where, as in art, colour and momentum become one.
Exhibiting artists:
Zsófi Barabás
István Felsmann
Bernát Haupt
Márton Nemes
Bella Pál
Curator: Kinga Popovics
Zsófi Barabás - Born in 1980 in Budapest, Zsófi Barabás studied painting, graphic design and education, graduating from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2004. She also attended art universities in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. In 2022, she earned her DLA degree under the supervision of Ilona Keserü.
Barabás has participated in numerous international residency programs, and in addition to exhibiting in Hungary, her work has been shown in the United States, Italy, and France. Her painting is characterized by organic abstract forms and bold colors. Graphic design plays a key role in her process, as she develops the compositions of her paintings from small-scale pen drawings. In her practice, recurring themes include the duality of plane and space, the transposition of elements from her paintings into physical space, and the desire to give painterly ideas a three-dimensional form.
Zsófi Barabás’s most characteristic features are the indicative, dense and scarce compositions, as well as the act of combining organic and geometric forms. Her biomorphic forms often build on, yet unfold from each other. Spreading out horizontally, they often seem to break through the thresholds of canvases into the great vastness. Her artistic language is defined by a conscious, yet constantly present experimental attitude, by an urge to search for new ways in representation, both in concept and execution. The duality of plane and space, the reinterpretation of compositional elements in 3D formats, and the need to plastically reinterpret pictorial thoughts.
István Felsmann is one of the distinctive voices of the young generation that emerged in the 2010s. He first drew attention with his panel works built from LEGO, infused with conceptual humor and reflections on the philosophy of art, transforming the raw material of a children’s toy into artworks. In his deeply engaged creative process, material diversity and the interplay between different artistic genres play a central role. Alongside painting, he also works in sculpture and printmaking, and creates installations and videos. Felsmann graduated in 2013 from the Painting Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. He has participated in several residency programs (in Valencia, Berlin, and Salzburg). Between 2014/2015 and 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Gyula Derkovits Prize, and he has been nominated twice for the Esterházy Art Award. He has been a student of the Hungarian University of Arts Doctoral School since 2022.
Bernát Haupt - Born in 2001 in Budapest, Bernát Haupt studied photography at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest and at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) in Tallinn. His works have been presented in Hungary and abroad, and featured at several international art fairs, including Art Busan (Korea).
Haupt’s photography focuses on visual transformation. Through the use of the camera, he investigates the relationship between light and space, with particular attention to perception. His technique-oriented approach examines the limits of sight through experimentation at the boundaries of representation. The built environment plays a central role in these explorations, as his works often focus on presence through light, sometimes treating photography not as an end in itself but as a tool for spatial investigation and visual thought.
Márton Nemes (b. 1986, Székesfehérvár, Hungary) is a multimedia artist based in New York and Budapest, creating paintings, sculptures, installations and sounds. He received an MFA from Chelsea College of Arts, London in 2018. Initially inspired by the architecture of Budapest, a city that he has spent the majority of his life residing in, Nemes’s practice is rooted in the colourful abstraction of buildings. Since this early work, and after moving to London, Nemes has been heavily influenced by techno subcultures, continuing to create abstracted colourful works whilst attempting to duplicate the atmosphere and experience of rave culture, creating a disintegration and rearrangement of the pictorial state. Made using a range of materials, Nemes’s artworks are eager to expand and bend, referencing the escapist counter cultures associated with rave scenes, creating multisensory, diverse experiences.
Bella Pál’s practice unfolds at the intersection of material and metaphysical inquiry. A graduate of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, she explores the tension between object and idea, investigating how form can both embody and resist meaning. Treating the object as a temporal mediator, she examines the fragile balance between presence and transformation, permanence and dissolution. Through sculpture, installation, and object-based painting, Bella constructs “perfect objects”—not for their flawlessness, but for their capacity to reveal imperfection as essence. Crystallinity, geometry, and organic irregularity intertwine in her compositions, where matter becomes process and structure becomes perception. Light, texture, and spatial resonance function as agents of introspection, transforming the act of viewing into a phenomenological encounter between body, space, and time.